Legacy of dictators.

[iain]

Jul 29, 2019 13:46:24 GMT @boogieeck said:

Diane Abbot is getting pelters for claiming that Mao did a lot of good to counterbalance the 45 million dead. I think this is harsh, I think there is a qualitative difference between death camps like Auschwitz and a million people dying of starvation due to economic mismanagement, even if there is no quantitative difference. I think it is fair to point out the Great Leap Forward as mitigation for the 45 million dead. And while, no it does not result in a balanced equation, it may be enough to take Mao from being worse than Hitler to not quite as bad as Hitler.

But here is the caveat. Mao, like Stalin and unlike Hitler, got to see his project through to the end. Completeness of the comparison would require that Hitler too got to see the project through to the end. What benefits would a victorious Hitler be able to point to to in some mitigate the Holocaust? A vibrant manufacturing industry? Ethical treatment of animals? The fall of Stalin?

Maybe we should look at Franco. I dont think this does much to make a case for Hitler, but it might make a case for Mussolini. Maybe we need to evaluate the opportunity cost. Had Mao not been given the wonderful opportunity to starve 45 million of his countrymen, Chiang Kai Shek would have been. Had Hitler not risen who would have? Another Nazi? A Communist? A social Democrat?

Leaving aside all the bad stuff, it is often argued that Sadaam was a better outcome for most Iraqis than the chaos which followed him. The same is now argued, on occasion by me, for Assad.

So, can I hear the case for what positive legacy the dictator of your choice might have left had only he been given the chance to see the project through?

The Great Leap Forward was an economic disaster. It is another mark against Mao, not some kind of mitigation.

[mboy]

I agree with much of this. It's true that intent is important - it's why we separate manslaughter from murder. It's true that Mao's 45m famine deaths were not intended (though many of Stalin's famine deaths *were* intended). Mao's legacy is complicated; and his legacy is stained by the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, which failed similarly. Before the Great Leap Mao's legacy was quite strongly positive, I would say. If he had died in 1957 he would be remembered as a great man like Ataturk in Turkey. There is no time at which Hitler could have died and been considered a great man.

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Jul 29, 2019 13:46:24 GMT @boogieeck said:

Diane Abbot is getting pelters for claiming that Mao did a lot of good to counterbalance the 45 million dead. I think this is harsh, I think there is a qualitative difference between death camps like Auschwitz and a million people dying of starvation due to economic mismanagement, even if there is no quantitative difference. I think it is fair to point out the Great Leap Forward as mitigation for the 45 million dead. And while, no it does not result in a balanced equation, it may be enough to take Mao from being worse than Hitler to not quite as bad as Hitler.

But here is the caveat. Mao, like Stalin and unlike Hitler, got to see his project through to the end. Completeness of the comparison would require that Hitler too got to see the project through to the end. What benefits would a victorious Hitler be able to point to to in some mitigate the Holocaust? A vibrant manufacturing industry? Ethical treatment of animals? The fall of Stalin?

Maybe we should look at Franco. I dont think this does much to make a case for Hitler, but it might make a case for Mussolini. Maybe we need to evaluate the opportunity cost. Had Mao not been given the wonderful opportunity to starve 45 million of his countrymen, Chiang Kai Shek would have been. Had Hitler not risen who would have? Another Nazi? A Communist? A social Democrat?

Leaving aside all the bad stuff, it is often argued that Sadaam was a better outcome for most Iraqis than the chaos which followed him. The same is now argued, on occasion by me, for Assad.

So, can I hear the case for what positive legacy the dictator of your choice might have left had only he been given the chance to see the project through?

The Reichswehr.

[iain]

Jul 29, 2019 14:01:17 GMT mboy said:

I agree with much of this. It's true that intent is important - it's why we separate manslaughter from murder. It's true that Mao's 45m famine deaths were not intended (though many of Stalin's famine deaths *were* intended). Mao's legacy is complicated; and his legacy is stained by the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, which failed similarly. Before the Great Leap Mao's legacy was quite strongly positive, I would say. If he had died in 1957 he would be remembered as a great man like Ataturk in Turkey. There is no time at which Hitler could have died and been considered a great man.

I don’t think that’s true either - try reading ‘Mao - The Unknown Story’ by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Peter III. He established religious freedom in Russia, unheard of at the time, abolished the secret police - which he was going to expose as sadistic torturers -, he mandated education for the children of aristocrats and created technical schools for the children of the middle classes and poor in the major cities and he made it illegal for a landowner to kill his serfs. He reigned for 186 days before his wife, Sophie of Anhalt and later Catherine the Great, overthrew him with her lover Orlov and had him killed. If he'd lived, he'd have been able to continue the reforms listed above.

[tonyhill]

Funny how people who condemn Tony Blair for his legacy in Iraq are prepared to try to find positives for murderous scum like those mentioned above. I find the subject of this thread to be appalling - who gives a fuck whether Mao killed 45 million people on purpose or by mistake: they were individuals like you and me.

[lbarnes]

Jul 29, 2019 13:46:24 GMT @boogieeck said:

Diane Abbot is getting pelters for claiming that Mao did a lot of good to counterbalance the 45 million dead. I think this is harsh, I think there is a qualitative difference between death camps like Auschwitz and a million people dying of starvation due to economic mismanagement, even if there is no quantitative difference. I think it is fair to point out the Great Leap Forward as mitigation for the 45 million dead. And while, no it does not result in a balanced equation, it may be enough to take Mao from being worse than Hitler to not quite as bad as Hitler.

But here is the caveat. Mao, like Stalin and unlike Hitler, got to see his project through to the end. Completeness of the comparison would require that Hitler too got to see the project through to the end. What benefits would a victorious Hitler be able to point to to in some mitigate the Holocaust? A vibrant manufacturing industry? Ethical treatment of animals? The fall of Stalin?

Maybe we should look at Franco. I dont think this does much to make a case for Hitler, but it might make a case for Mussolini. Maybe we need to evaluate the opportunity cost. Had Mao not been given the wonderful opportunity to starve 45 million of his countrymen, Chiang Kai Shek would have been. Had Hitler not risen who would have? Another Nazi? A Communist? A social Democrat?

Leaving aside all the bad stuff, it is often argued that Sadaam was a better outcome for most Iraqis than the chaos which followed him. The same is now argued, on occasion by me, for Assad.

So, can I hear the case for what positive legacy the dictator of your choice might have left had only he been given the chance to see the project through?

"What benefits would a victorious Hitler be able to point to to in some mitigate the Holocaust?
"

Are you serious?

[Deleted]

Jul 29, 2019 16:10:00 GMT Forfarshire Conservative said:

Peter III. He established religious freedom in Russia, unheard of at the time, abolished the secret police - which he was going to expose as sadistic torturers -, he mandated education for the children of aristocrats and created technical schools for the children of the middle classes and poor in the major cities and he made it illegal for a landowner to kill his serfs. He reigned for 186 days before his wife, Sophie of Anhalt and later Catherine the Great, overthrew him with her lover Orlov and had him killed. If he'd lived, he'd have been able to continue the reforms listed above.

A balanced assessment of Peter III is difficult, as most of the information we have about his character comes from the very negative picture painted by his wife. Both Peter and Catherine were born German Lutherans who, to begin with, barely spoke Russian and were as appalled by the country's backwardness and brutality as they were intoxicated by its potential power. Both had reformist agendas, but realising them was not a simple matter. Russia might have been an autocracy, but it was autocracy tempered by the very real risk of dethronement and murder, and hampered by the completely undeveloped state of the institutions at the Monarch's disposal and the lack of suitable people at all levels to operate them. Reform was only possible by co opting or neutralising powerful forces such as the nobility and the Church, and to the extent that there was any infrastructure to implement it.

Peter's intentions, however good they may have seemed in the abstract, may not have been guided by a sense of what was possible. Catherine's undoubtedly were, though even she did not always end up travelling in the direction she intended. She disliked serfdom, but ended up with more serfs than she had started with. Why? She had to placate the nobility, and - in any case - the manorial system was the only form of local administration that Russia had. Monarchs, like other people, are obliged to cut their coats according to the cloth available to them.

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Jul 29, 2019 16:34:11 GMT tonyhill said:

Funny how people who condemn Tony Blair for his legacy in Iraq are prepared to try to find positives for murderous scum like those mentioned above. I find the subject of this thread to be appalling - who gives a fuck whether Mao killed 45 million people on purpose or by mistake: they were individuals like you and me.

Peter III was not "murderous scum", quite the opposite. Please be more precise with your language.

[mboy]

Jul 29, 2019 16:34:11 GMT tonyhill said:

Funny how people who condemn Tony Blair for his legacy in Iraq are prepared to try to find positives for murderous scum like those mentioned above. I find the subject of this thread to be appalling - who gives a fuck whether Mao killed 45 million people on purpose or by mistake: they were individuals like you and me.

This is simplistic - it's no different to the people claiming Churchill is a mass-murdering monster in the same league as Hitler because of the millions who died in the Bengal famine. Famine deaths due to negligence and economic misunderstanding are obviously a terrible thing, but to raise them to the level of murder is to eliminate the distinction between murder and manslaughter, and to erase the moral distinction between accident and deliberate...

[mboy]

Jul 29, 2019 16:44:33 GMT lbarnes said:

"What benefits would a victorious Hitler be able to point to to in some mitigate the Holocaust?
"

Are you serious?

We are able to analyse the deep history and impact of the Roman Empire (which killed millions and exterminated entire nations) or the Islamic Caliphate (ditto) or the Chinese Empire (ditto), or the Mongol Empire (even worse - Genghis Khan and his sons exterminated nearly 10% of the world's population, the greatest mass killing in human history). The reason for that is of course that they were all centuries ago, and no one still has personal involvement in the events. Perhaps you are arguing that the holocaust is uniquely evil in history; in which case fair enough...but then I refer you to Tony Hill's point - all the people the Mongols exterminated were real people as well and yet we talk about the Pax Mongolica...

Boog's point, although perhaps tasteless, is what if Germany has won the war, Hitler and co had died off, and then the 1,000 year Reich had actually been mostly peaceful and prevented many other wars? Not shameful to discuss how we might look back on it in 3019AD.

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Jul 29, 2019 16:51:18 GMT @goodoldcause2 said:

Jul 29, 2019 16:10:00 GMT Forfarshire Conservative said:

Peter III. He established religious freedom in Russia, unheard of at the time, abolished the secret police - which he was going to expose as sadistic torturers -, he mandated education for the children of aristocrats and created technical schools for the children of the middle classes and poor in the major cities and he made it illegal for a landowner to kill his serfs. He reigned for 186 days before his wife, Sophie of Anhalt and later Catherine the Great, overthrew him with her lover Orlov and had him killed. If he'd lived, he'd have been able to continue the reforms listed above.

A balanced assessment of Peter III is difficult, as most of the information we have about his character comes from the very negative picture painted by his wife. Both Peter and Catherine were born German Lutherans who, to begin with, barely spoke Russian and were as appalled by the country's backwardness and brutality as they were intoxicated by its potential power. Both had reformist agendas, but realising them was not a simple matter. Russia might have been an autocracy, but it was autocracy tempered by the very real risk of dethronement and murder, and hampered by the completely undeveloped state of the institutions at the Monarch's disposal and the lack of suitable people at all levels to operate them. Reform was only possible by co opting or neutralising powerful forces such as the nobility and the Church, and to the extent that there was any infrastructure to implement it.

Peter's intentions, however good they may have seemed in the abstract, may not have been guided by a sense of what was possible. Catherine's undoubtedly were, though even she did not always end up travelling in the direction she intended. She disliked serfdom, but ended up with more serfs than she had started with. Why? She had to placate the nobility, and - in any case - the manorial system was the only form of local administration that Russia had. Monarchs, like other people, are obliged to cut their coats according to the cloth available to them.

Yes, I concur with that. Given Peter's arrest and murder was most probably carried out by guards units that had been removed from power, and under threat of punishment, it does seem inescapable that he pissed off too many with his reforms. It's also true they targeted those two institutions you mentioned that were pivotal to Russia - the aristocracy and Orthodox Church - not smart in retrospect. I'd also say my comment was not anti Catherine, I admire Voltaire's "Star of the North" a lot, though I'm still a Peter the Great fanboy. 😅

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Jul 29, 2019 17:05:24 GMT mboy said:

Jul 29, 2019 16:44:33 GMT lbarnes said:

"What benefits would a victorious Hitler be able to point to to in some mitigate the Holocaust?
"

Are you serious?

We are able to analyse the deep history and impact of the Roman Empire (which killed millions and exterminated entire nations) or the Islamic Caliphate (ditto) or the Chinese Empire (ditto), or the Mongol Empire (even worse - Genghis Khan and his sons exterminated nearly 10% of the world's population, the greatest mass killing in human history). The reason for that is of course that they were all centuries ago, and no one still has personal involvement in the events. Perhaps you are arguing that the holocaust is uniquely evil in history; in which case fair enough...but then I refer you to Tony Hill's point - all the people the Mongols exterminated were real people as well and yet we talk about the Pax Mongolica...

Boog's point, although perhaps tasteless, is what if Germany has won the war, Hitler and co had died off, and then the 1,000 year Reich had actually been mostly peaceful and prevented many other wars? Not shameful to discuss how we might look back on it in 3019AD.

Though it's doubtful that the Reich would've lasted to the present in my opinion, never mind 3019. I could expand but that's another topic for a different thread and I'd hate to incur the wrath of the acceptable analysis police. 

[Devil Wincarnate]

Hitler would not have lived to see the final realisation of the Nazi project.  It was so monstrously inefficient, and economically illiterate, that the economy would have eventually collapsed.  Effectively, it would have ended up as East Germany nearly did.

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Jul 29, 2019 17:26:07 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Hitler would not have lived to see the final realisation of the Nazi project.  It was so monstrously inefficient, and economically illiterate, that the economy would have eventually collapsed.  Effectively, it would have ended up as East Germany nearly did.

There's also the fact that the colonisation of the East was completely unfeasible. There's no way the Nazis would've been able to indefinitely subjugate and exterminate the Slavic people's. A defeated European Russia would've been the Maquis on crack. They'd have been bogged down in a perpetual war that would've hastened the economic collapse.

[J.G.Harston]

Jul 29, 2019 13:57:17 GMT iain said:

The Great Leap Forward was an economic disaster. It is another mark against Mao, not some kind of mitigation.

Indeed, my ex-wife's parents paddled 80 miles across open seas with the kids to escape the Great Leap Forward.

[Sibboleth]

Jul 29, 2019 16:34:11 GMT tonyhill said:

Funny how people who condemn Tony Blair for his legacy in Iraq are prepared to try to find positives for murderous scum like those mentioned above. I find the subject of this thread to be appalling - who gives a fuck whether Mao killed 45 million people on purpose or by mistake: they were individuals like you and me.

There's always a certain whiff of the undergraduate edgelord to this sort of discussion.

[mboy]

Jul 29, 2019 17:26:07 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Hitler would not have lived to see the final realisation of the Nazi project.  It was so monstrously inefficient, and economically illiterate, that the economy would have eventually collapsed.  Effectively, it would have ended up as East Germany nearly did.

It took until 1991 for the Warsaw Pact to collapse, and that was even more economically illiterate, so I’m not sure it follows that the Nazi economy would have collapsed sooner if it won. If the economy got into trouble I suspect the Nazi machine would have resorted to widespread slave labour (of which there was a near infinite supply in Russia) which would have supported the economy.

[Devil Wincarnate]

Jul 29, 2019 19:03:28 GMT mboy said:

Jul 29, 2019 17:26:07 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Hitler would not have lived to see the final realisation of the Nazi project.  It was so monstrously inefficient, and economically illiterate, that the economy would have eventually collapsed.  Effectively, it would have ended up as East Germany nearly did.

It took until 1991 for the Warsaw Pact to collapse, and that was even more economically illiterate, so I’m not sure it follows that the Nazi economy would have collapsed sooner if it won. If the economy got into trouble I suspect the Nazi machine would have resorted to widespread slave labour (of which there was a near infinite supply in Russia) which would have supported the economy.

The Warsaw Pact though, through Comecon, did manage to enforce specialisation in each country, which did mitigate some of its most ludicrous aspects.  And for the last decade it was kept alive artificially by the West.  

In the case of Germany, even Goebbels was worried about the deficit.  It all depends on how the war progresses, but an almost never-ending guerilla war in the Urals, a money-draining attempt to settle the East with German settlers*, and the occupation of various different, fully impoverished countries.  That would have been a huge drain on the economy, like a ramped-up version of the USSR in the Eighties.

* It should be noted that nobody actually wanted to live in the East. This had been tried in Posen province before the First World War, and had been an expensive disaster.  Meanwhile 3 million ethnic Germans had fled from East Prussia alone to Berlin and the Ruhr between 1871 and 1918.

[Forfarshire Conservative]

Jul 29, 2019 19:32:00 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Jul 29, 2019 19:03:28 GMT mboy said:

It took until 1991 for the Warsaw Pact to collapse, and that was even more economically illiterate, so I’m not sure it follows that the Nazi economy would have collapsed sooner if it won. If the economy got into trouble I suspect the Nazi machine would have resorted to widespread slave labour (of which there was a near infinite supply in Russia) which would have supported the economy.

The Warsaw Pact though, through Comecon, did manage to enforce specialisation in each country, which did mitigate some of its most ludicrous aspects.  And for the last decade it was kept alive artificially by the West.  

In the case of Germany, even Goebbels was worried about the deficit.  It all depends on how the war progresses, but an almost never-ending guerilla war in the Urals, a money-draining attempt to settle the East with German settlers*, and the occupation of various different, fully impoverished countries.  That would have been a huge drain on the economy, like a ramped-up version of the USSR in the Eighties.

* It should be noted that nobody actually wanted to live in the East. This had been tried in Posen province before the First World War, and had been an expensive disaster.  Meanwhile 3 million ethnic Germans had fled from East Prussia alone to Berlin and the Ruhr between 1871 and 1918.

Then you've got the inevitable Cold War with America which would've triumphed over the Empire of Japan. The expense of maintaining a Cold War with the Americas, Australasia and a huge chunk of Asia would've been vast.